Now that Mike is retired, it’s just no big deal driving somewhere. When he was working, he was going in and out of the city every day and was tired of driving. Now, he’s only too happy to drive into town over the weekend because he’s not doing it 5 times a week. We had heard about the Titanic exhibition on at the Waterfront and thought it would be great to see. On arrival you get given your boarding pass.
You can buy a programme and have a personal guide, but we chose to go it alone. There is a lot to see. We spent close to an hour working our way from the start to the end, reading stories we had never heard, seeing some of the items found at the bottom of the ocean and now preserved. It is very well put together. On the reverse side of the ticket is the name of a passenger, who they were travelling with and a little bit about them. At the end of the exhibition, there is a board on which you read those who survived and those who did not. You can then look up the passenger you represent and see if you lived or died. All three of us were lost. In fact, the passenger Mike represented, had 6 children. He, his wife and all 6 perished. The passenger I represented was a mistress of a film-maker. They were travelling together while he filmed Titanic’s first voyage. Julian’s character was travelling with his wife. She survived. It is good that the account of the Titanic is preserved. We found it fascinating. (It is on at the Waterfront until 12th March).
After that visit, we went to Quay 4 for dinner.
We sat on the upstairs open deck and admired the beauty of the Waterfront at sunset…
This was our dinner view…
As darkness fell and 8pm came around, all the pleasure boats that had taken tourists on sunset cruises began to return…all sizes and different shapes docked for the night. They gilded past us, adding an unexpected pleasure to our evening.
It was all a reminder that I live in the best city in the world.
In 1580, Sir Francis Drake encountered our shores for the first time. He captured his first impressions….
“This cape is the most stately thing and the fairest cape we saw in the whole circumference of the earth.”
I arrived in this majestic city in the dying days of 1982. Having grown up in landlocked Zimbabwe, I had seen the sea, but twice…. the Indian Ocean off Durban and the English channel off Brighton. I had never been to Cape Town and what I knew about it was restricted to stories friends told and from books taken out the library. No Google in 1980. How I got to be here is a story on its own and one that I will explain in coming days.
In the meantime, I relish in its beauty…
Psalm 96:11-12
Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it.
Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.
I absolutely love the sea, the mountains, the people.
Keep the smile going!
God bless you!
In His Grip,
Helga xx 🙂